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the monk and the boombox

You don’t see many monks walking around grooving to loud music. You don’t see many monks with boomboxes on their shoulders.

I stopped listening to my radio yesterday.

It’s busy at the post office…frenetic. My Jeep Cherokee is piled with mail and packages…I usually can’t even see out of the windows when I leave the office to begin my deliveries. I have a small hole on either side of the car…and if I crane my neck just right, I can get a view of who might be trying to hit me, in spite of my flashing lights and signage warning that I stop a lot.

Previously, I’d been listening to music cranked LOUD. I thought that it might be a motivator…might spur me on to higher peaks of adrenaline fueled “mailmanning”.

It did…I was a manic mailman delivering all those packages and Christmas cards.

I rocked.

But it also made me kind of nervous.

If I need to amp it up a little more to get through an already amped up time of year, there might be something a little screwed up with my logic.

Maybe it’s smarter to try and bring it down a little.

Calm myself.

Breathe.

So I stopped listening to the radio. No loud music, no conservative talk, no PBS reports on why the bees might be dying.

It was so peaceful. It was easy when all I had to think about was each mailbox and the mail I was putting in it, then the next, then the next.

It made it kind of meditative.

I could almost go into a Postal Trance without some really loud Jonny Lang to keep me hyper.

But I really liked it. I’d written about keeping things “quiet” before on the blog.

It’s always a revelation to feel what a difference some silence can make in how the day goes.

It really can be kind of peaceful if I don’t let someone else’s frantic “art” intrude on my day.

The Bible says “Be still…and know that I am God.”

That’s pretty simple, really…but kind of hard.

We’re just a bunch of squirmers…who would want to take things down a notch just so we could hear the word of God? Who would want to tone it down when we could go through life just ROCKING OUT!!!! Overly caffeinated and manic, bouncing off the walls and in heavy attack mode…beating each day up before it has a chance to return the aggression?

We complicate it. We drink another cup of coffee and let our minds go wild, explaining to the world who “God” is. All our theology and intellectual maneuvering doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a simple message. It’s a simple message that we won’t leave alone. We politicize and divide something as big and grand as spirituality because it’s what we know…it’s what we do best.

We have to leave our mark on the Word.

Maybe it’s like everyone trying to talk at once at a party…we just get excited and think that we have something to say?